


The Last Chance

by Saziikins



Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: M/M, mystrade, winterMystrade
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-10
Updated: 2015-01-10
Packaged: 2018-03-06 23:57:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,592
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3153104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Saziikins/pseuds/Saziikins
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After getting trapped in Mycroft's office following a bomb, he and Greg finally get around to negotiating their relationship.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Last Chance

**Author's Note:**

> Written for just-a-story-and-stories-end for the Mystrade Winter Exchange.

The last thing he remembered was the bang. Then everything had gone black.

It took him a few seconds to get his bearings. He’d been in Mycroft’s office. They’d been discussing a joint police and MI5 project. Greg had got frustrated at him. Stood up and paced around and Mycroft had got up from his chair. He’d walked around his desk until they were stood yelling at each other from opposite sides of the room. Then there was the bang.

Greg blinked into the darkness, spluttering. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, trying to get a look around at what was left of Mycroft’s office.

“Greg?” Mycroft’s voice came out from somewhere nearby.

Greg fumbled in his jacket pocket for his phone. “Yeah,” he said, his voice hoarse. “Yeah. You alright?”

“Yes,” Mycroft said. “I think I’ve got a sprained ankle, broken collarbone, bruising and a lot of cuts, but none of them are deep. Are you alright?”

Greg grabbed his phone, flicking the torch on and lighting up some of the room. Mycroft was sat a few feet away, both legs stretched out in front of him. His jacket was off, and had been tied around his left shoulder, securing his arm. Greg nodded at him and glanced down at himself. He was covered in dust, but he’d avoided anything heavy falling on his body.

“You’ve hit your head,” Mycroft murmured. “It doesn’t look deep but when we get to hospital, you’ll need to have it checked out.”

Greg nodded. “Yeah,” he said. He lifted his hand to the cut, and found the blood had already dried. That seemed to be the extent of his injuries, with the exception of some bruising, and he had a feeling they’d both got away lightly.

“The ambulances and experts are already here,” Mycroft said. “I told them we were fine. It might take an hour before they can secure the building and make it safe for them to come in and get us.”

Greg frowned. “You didn’t know if I was alright.”

“I calculated the amount of rubble surrounding you, the trajectory of the light fitting, the weight of it… I suppose the fact you were unconscious was troubling, but that head wound isn’t deep. You were hit hard enough to knock you out, but not hard enough, I think, to cause long-term problems. Not in that location of your brain.”

“Ain’t that something?” Greg grumbled. He touched his chest and found it felt bruised. He noticed the cuts down his arms. “What you doing with your jacket?”

“Trying to support my collarbone. I would try and do something for my ankle, but it the collarbone was complicated enough.”

“Where’d you learn to do that?” Greg asked.

“You need to know First Aid when you’re working in the field. You never know when you might need it.”

“Want me to do something about your ankle?”

“I. Well, yes, maybe. Can you?”

Greg shrugged. “Dunno. If you tell me what to do, I might manage it. I think my jacket’s around here somewhere.” He frowned, moving his phone and trying to hunt for his jacket. He’d taken it off just minutes before the… explosion? Is that what had happened? “Was it a bomb?” he asked as he moved a few of the bricks to one side.

“I believe so. I’m not sure exactly where the blast was, but yes. These walls are reinforced, we’ve got away relatively unscathed. Considering.”

“Right.”

Greg sighed, and checked his phone, flicking to BBC News. “They reckon it’s been a bomb,” he said after a few minutes. “Six confirmed dead.”

Mycroft nodded. “I couldn’t find my phone to check that, but I thought it must have been bad. I thought I had some painkillers on my desk but I couldn’t hobble over there.”

“I reckon I can manage it.”

“Best not,” Mycroft told him. “We don’t want to risk knocking anything that is holding the building together. Leave the experts to their work.”

“Alright.” Greg sighed, lifting his jacket up off the ground. “Got it,” he said. “You reckon it’ll be alright if I slide over to you?”

“I think so.”

Holding his jacket over the crook of his arm, Greg started shuffling over to Mycroft, ducking his head under wires from the light fitting above their head. “That what hit me?” he asked. “The light?”

“I think so.”

“That’s alright then, isn’t it? Better than being hit by the ceiling.”

He reached Mycroft, putting his phone down to cast some light over them. From nearby, there was a bang and soft voices.

“They’re beginning to reinforce the walls,” Mycroft said. “So that they can begin to move things around. They need to prevent the ceiling from collapsing on us.”

“Yeah, I’ve been hit on the head once too many times today already,” Greg tried to joke. “What ankle?”

“My right one. You just need to provide some support. If you tie the sleeves around it, that should be sufficient for now.”

Greg nodded and began to work. Their breaths sounded hollow in this space, once a grand and imposing office. Now it was reduced to dust and brick and broken furniture. Books and paperwork were splayed around the room.

“Greg? Can you do something for me?”

“Yeah?”

“Can you try and call Anthea?”

Greg nodded. “Here,” he said, handing over his phone. “You do it.”

Mycroft nodded him a thanks, wincing a little as Greg wrapped his jacket around his injured ankle. He sat back, sighing, watching as Mycroft waited for Anthea to answer the call. When Mycroft didn’t speak and lowered the phone from his ear, Greg flashed him a sympathetic smile. “She might not be able to get to her phone either,” he said.

“Mmm. Perhaps. Although, I had a feeling they were surgically attached.”

Greg shook his head and rubbed Mycroft’s right knee, offering a gentle squeeze. “She’s the toughest cookie I know. She’ll be fine.”

Mycroft nodded, glancing down at where Greg’s hand was resting. He raised his eyebrows.

“Oh what?” Greg asked. “I can’t offer you a bit of comfort? Look, fine, I get that you don’t want a relationship with me, but it doesn’t mean we can’t be friends, yeah?”

“And friends… do that?” Mycroft asked.

“Comfort. Physical contact. It’s a good thing. You ever heard of oxytocin?”

Mycroft shot him a scathing expression. “What kind of idiot do you take me for?”

“The kind of idiot who doesn’t do what he wants, that’s what.”

“We are not talking about this,” Mycroft murmured.

Greg rolled his eyes, removing his hand and trying to find a comfortable position to sit in. The adrenaline was beginning to wear off, leaving him cold and in pain. “I was going to go to Italy,” he said. “On holiday next month. I was going to sit on the beach somewhere.”

“Why Italy?”

“Never been. Why not Italy?”

“I wouldn’t have thought it would be your kind of place to visit.”

“Clearly you don’t know me as well as you thought you did.”

“I know you well enough,” Mycroft retorted.

“Well enough to take me out for dinners and to the theatre,” Greg said with a nod. “Well enough to kiss me. But not well enough to trust me.”

“I trust you.”

Greg paused for a moment, licking his lips and finding them chapped and covered in dust. He wiped them with his fingers. “Yeah, but you don’t trust me with you. You reckon I’m gonna break your heart.”

“That is not why I refused a relationship with you. I refused a relationship with you because I don’t have the time and because I won’t risk being distracted from my work.”

“Nope. You’re just scared. All of what you just said is an excuse.”

“I’m not attracted to you.”

Greg snorted. “Pull the other one. You don’t kiss someone you’re not a bit attracted to. And you don’t kiss someone the way you kissed me if you don’t feel something.”

Mycroft shook his head. “I don’t want to be with you.”

“Well, fine. Fine and dandy. I’m too old not to protect myself a bit and I haven’t counted on something between us happening. Thought we could both use a good bit of snogging to be honest. But I’m not going to beg you. It’s the last time I mention it.”

They fell quiet, listening to the muffled voices, occasional shouts for equipment, the sound of drills and bricks being moved. Greg glanced down at his phone and smiled, holding it out to Mycroft. “It’s Anth.”

“She hates it when you call her that.”

“No, she doesn’t. She hates it when anyone but me calls her it. She lets me off the hook because I walk her dog when she’s away on trips with you.”

Mycroft answered the call. “Anthea?” Greg brushed some soot off his shirt as he listened to Mycroft speak. “Good. Yes, Greg and I are fine. They’re working to let us out as we speak. The Prime Minister? Oh good lord. Have they announced it yet?”

Greg stared at him.

“Prepare the Deputy Prime Minister, remind people of the protocols… I might be out of action for a few more hours, but you can handle this. Keep in touch.” Mycroft hung up the call and passed the phone back. “The Prime Minister was the target. The bomb went off during a meeting he was holding.”

“Dead?”

“Yes, but no one knows yet.”

“Bloody hell.”

“This is my life, Greg. This… chaos. This is what I do.”

“I know what you do. I get it.”

“I’m warning you off.”

Greg nodded. “I know. But I don’t think you’re doing it for the right reasons. We could have died. If we’d been stood by that bookshelf over there…” They both turned their heads towards the offending piece of furniture with a large pile of bricks and a chunk of ceiling on top of it. “So, we could have died,” Greg said softly, rubbing his face. “And. And you’ve got to think, if I had died and you didn’t, would you have had any regrets?”

Mycroft stayed quiet, looking around his office. “I negotiate for a-living,” he said eventually.

“I know.”

“So. What are your terms?”

Greg chuckled. “What?”

“Your terms. For a relationship with me. What do you want and expect from me?”

Only a Holmes, Greg thought, rolling his eyes. “You know, this is not how people do this. There’s no contract, no agreements or handshakes.”

“I’m not like most people. State your terms.”

Greg smiled, sitting up and crossing his arms. “I want to kiss you. I want to sleep with you, and hold your hand. I want… a couple of nights a week, you and me, date night. I want for you to just give it a chance.”

“I will not hold your hand in public.”

Greg nodded. “I can accept that.”

“I am not given to outpourings of public affection. As for your proposed ‘date nights’… once a week. Not a couple of nights. I can’t guarantee more than one.”

“I know. Work’s not easy to negotiate around. That’s fine.”

Mycroft gazed at him for a moment before shaking his head, wincing and touching his collarbone. “We are both in our 40s. We are too old for this.”

Greg groaned. “Just when I thought we were getting somewhere…”

“You’re quite right to say we could have died. The thought did cross my mind when I realised what had happened.”

Greg leaned forward. “What did you think?”

“I thought ‘oh hell. What was this all for?’”

Greg blinked, hardly daring to breathe. “What do you mean?”

Mycroft looked down at his knees. “All anyone asks is that when they die, someone will care, that they will be remembered and thought of on occasion.”

“Your folks would do that.”

“By… conditioning. Because I am their child, because humans are programmed to care about their offspring. But you care. It’s… welcome. Appreciated. But I can’t accept it.”

“Why not?”

“Because we’re in our 40s. And the things we may both have wanted in our 30s no longer apply.”

Greg frowned. “I don’t follow.”

“When I was in my 30s, I imagined finding someone to marry. I’m a traditional man, Greg, and I believed gay marriage was inevitable and that one day, I could do it. And seeing Anthea with her child several years ago… well, I got quite attached.”

“Yeah, her sprogglet is the cutest kid in the world.”

“I don’t disagree,” Mycroft murmured. “I wanted children,” he added, a hint of sadness in his voice. “Three. So they would never be alone. Then I turned 38 and I thought perhaps there was still a chance. I met someone. I thought I did.”

“But?”

“Not everyone wants those things. And now I’m 43. And a child deserves better than an ageing parent. And of course, I would not do it alone.”

“Who says you have to be alone?” Greg lifted his hand. “I’m sitting right here. Have you listened to a single word I’ve said in the past month? You know the bit where I said I liked you? And where I told you that I’m serious about you and me? Look. I know I’m not much. Grey hair, a job with no more chances of promotion because I caused too much of a ruckus. I know I smoke and drink too much and my gambling is a problem and that’s probably something I’ll ever have control over. But if you are willing to take a chance, then I’d give you that. Everything you want.”

“You can’t know that. I believe these things take time. To… to negotiate a relationship, to find how you fit into each other’s lives before you make such life-altering decisions.”

“We know how we fit into each other’s lives. It’s been 10 years, Mycroft. For 10 years, we’ve negotiated and pushed each other’s limits. We’re compatible. So. So, let’s negotiate. Yeah, people will think we’re crazy. And maybe they’ll think we’re together because we both ran out of options, but what if that’s okay? My last chance, your last chance. We’re both in our 40s. So. So we might never get another chance like this.”

“How romantic.”

Greg snorted. “Says the man who wanted to negotiate terms. Move in with me.”

“I think not. You’ll have to live with me until we find somewhere suitable.”

“Three kids, right? We need a garden.”

“I agree. We will have to make changes to our work.”

“That’s fine.” Greg began to smile. “I never thought I’d have a kid, Mycroft. I’d do anything to have one, or three. With you. Whatever it takes, whatever you need me to do. I’m your man.”

Mycroft stared at him for a second, wonderment and confusion and then contentment flickering over his face. “Then that’s enough,” he finally said.

Greg nodded. They watched as some bricks were moved from the opposite wall and a man with a helmet on his head, complete with a torch, glanced in at them both. “We’ll be with you in five,” he said. “Sit tight. We’ll get you out.”

Mycroft nodded and reached out, taking Greg’s hand in his own. Greg squeezed his fingers. “This may be our last chance, Greg,” Mycroft said, studying him. “But that does not make you my last resort.”

Greg nodded. “Likewise.” And then he shuffled over, cupping Mycroft’s dust-covered cheek in one hand. They smiled before sealing the deal with a soft kiss.


End file.
